world 1463

Cancer

'You are a mourning stream [or was it machine?].'


One

First memory of a dream—probably in about 1974 or 1975.

A technicolour lion ate my sister (Julia). There were many bright drawings of animals standing around like in The Jungle Book. I screamed and screamed but it did not undead her.

Two

September 22, 2013 (the day after Julia’s birthday).

At hotel or a hospital or a hospice.
I dropped Julia off in reception and went upstairs to a very ugly, ornate bedroom, where I enjoyed myself doing nothing in particular. Then I fell asleep.
The ringing phone woke me. I answered it. Christopher said, ‘I don’t know how to say this…’ or ‘I cannot believe I’m saying this but…she’s gone.’
He meant Julia.
I couldn’t understand how this could be. I’d only just left her. I looked out the window just in time to see her leaving the building.
But I knew she was dead.

Commentary: The next day she and I discussed how the Julia that didn’t have cancer has died. From here on out, death or life, she has had cancer.

Three

October 16, 2013 (the day of Julia’s surgery).

S1 gave me a cranial-sacral treatment that lasted very briefly—like a minute. I don’t remember any details except that it was over before it began.

She finished in her matter-of-fact way, saying, ‘I must attend to mother. She’s very dead.’

Four

July 25, 2014.

Julia’s cancer had returned.
She died suddenly.
Then I heard that she was waiting to die.
Then it was that she had died.
The cancer was a triangle in the right side of her neck (like Aladdin Sane’s liquid gold collarbone).
Then it seemed that there might be a treatment but she didn’t want to do it.
I kept trying to convince her for her children’s sake.
Then it seemed she had died again.
She had touched an electric fence or something else that killed her quickly.
With little provocation.
Throughout I had waves of devastation and frustration.
Christopher, at one point, said, ‘You are a mourning stream [or was it machine?].’
I could not move from knowing—kept repeating—

‘Now
I
Am
Alone.’

1Julia told me that S’s mother had, in fact, died that afternoon


Dream of the Drawing for Everything alchemies dream-like things: images and texts and films and sketches and philosophy and half-thoughts and visions and moments and fragments of all kinds. Resting and exploring here may deepen your relationship with the oneiric and, therefore, all apparent reality. Resting and exploring here may augment your psyche’s healing tendency—as Jung called it—through highlighting and delighting in humanity’s hallucinatory creations. (Without them, after all, neurologists assure us we would go starkers.) It is time there was a potentially infinite, intimate museum to what cannot be seen. Welcome to the museum.

Dream of the Drawing for Everything is some of the collaboration between artist Nuala Clarke & writer Crystal Gandrud. Our work arises out of what dances on the edges of perception and our collective attention gravitates to the dream-like nature of human experience. We have been in collaboration since 2010. Our merged practices of visual and textual art unfold on a continuum, as part of an interconnected series evolving over time. Both performed “Fair Shouldered One” (a book which is not a book) at the &Now Literary Festival in Paris, 2012 and installed “Between Spaces”, a Yeats inspired dreamscape at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, 2013. Most recently participated in the Find Arts Project in Castlebar, Ireland. Our public art installation of words and images printed on linen, “Woven Found”, hung on Castle Street. The project won the best commissioning practice award from Allianz Business to Arts, 2014.

Nuala Clarke

Nuala Clarke, visual artist, lives and works between Co. Mayo and New York City. Educated at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to New York City in 1993. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. Clarke has been represented by Boltax Gallery, NY since 2005. Recent shows include, Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); to Tremble into Stillness, a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; RHA invited artist; and A drawing for Everything, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2013). BLINK, a public art installation at the Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2014). Upcoming shows (2015): Impressions of Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Of this place, Sligo and Madrid.

nualaclarke@gmail.com

Crystal Gandrud

Crystal Gandrud, writer, lives in New York City and Normandy, France. She holds an MFA, Creative Writing and a BFA, Classical Theatre. Recent publications include “Yeatsian: Numberless Dreamers,” The Encyclopedia Project, 2014, “Here,” Lost Magazine, and “Idiom: Woodbird Flies Early,” The Encyclopedia Project. Her dissertation, “Murdoch: the Mandala Maker,” was presented at Kingston University’s Iris Murdoch Conference (2006), London. At the most recent Murdoch Conference, she performed a multi-media excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “The Forgotten Man,” inspired by Murdoch’s philosophical writings. She is under contract for a memoire entitled “Astonishment: A Litany of the Uncanny.”

gandrud@actuallyorange.com

Tell us your dreams. Dreams are accepted by the editorial staff on the basis of aesthetics. That said, there are certain topics that will not be considered. Extremely violent or pornographic dreams will not be accepted on any basis so please do not submit them.

All dreams must have three components:

1) a title

2) a number of no more than 20 characters (subject to a request to reconsider if that number is already used)

3) your name as you wish it to appear

Dreams may be any length.

Please submit dreams in an attached word document only. If you, as the dreamer, are also a visual artist, you are invited to send one companion image in the form of an attached jpeg of a file size of no larger than 250k (no compressed files). If you are not a visual artist but feel a drawing you have done of the dream deepens the experience of it, please follow the guidelines for submission of an image above. In both cases, please specify if you are willing to publish the text without the image.

info@actuallyorange.com